The present invention relates to a camera control system, camera control apparatus, camera operation device, and method, for controlling remote cameras.
Recently, the Internet has received a lot of attention. The assignee of the present invention has already disclosed some inventions that relate to camera servers connected to the Internet. According to such inventions, the user connects a desired camera server via the Internet, controls the angle (pan and tilt angles and zoom value) of a camera connected to the camera server, and can observe live images sensed by the camera. For example, when the camera of the camera server is set at a resort, tourist spot, or the like, users can enjoy images of such locations at their homes.
However, since images sensed by the camera are transferred to clients connected to the server at that time, all users at these clients can observe the images but one client (one user) alone has the right of access to control that camera, i.e., can freely operate the pan and tilt angles and zoom value. Even when the time period of the right of access to control the camera granted to a single client is limited, and the right of access to control is granted, e.g., to queued clients in turn, if a large number of clients are queued, each user cannot observe an image at his or her desired angle.